The invention relates to voice-activated devices, and particularly to devices for generating electronic signals responsive to voice commands.
A variety of new voice-activated products have appeared recently, ranging from the sublime (in-car GPS, phone dialers, computer dictation) to the ridiculous (voice-activated t-shirts, coffee pots, light-sabers). The most practical near-term application for voice-activation technology is for hands-free triggering of electronic instruments such as oscilloscopes and meters. Oddly, this has received almost no attention.
Everyone with experience in electronic testing knows how hard it is to trigger a scope while holding multiple probes against specific locations on the circuit under test. Fine-pitch parts don't make this any easier. Sometimes it is sufficient to free-run the scope or use some other signal as a trigger, but in many cases the engineer needs to trigger the measurement directly, at a particular time. for other measurements, it is necessary to activate or modulate the circuit under test, for example to compare waveforms under two different conditions. Most engineers have only two hands and therefore cannot trigger the scope manually or activate the circuit under test, while holding multiple probes in position (although some have been known to trigger the scope with a toe.)
A single patent (U.S. Pat. No. 7,027,991) partially mitigates this problem with an oscilloscope that can be controlled by voice commands. This is a step in the right direction, but it fails to exploit the versatility of voice-activation technology in several aspects. First, the prior-art scope trigger is usable only for the instrument that contains it, whereas a truly versatile stand-alone device should be able to trigger a wide range of voltage-measurement instruments simply by connecting with a cable. Second, the prior-art systems are not able to activate the circuit under test, because there is no provision for a voice-responsive output signal. Third, the prior-art systems provide no external indication as to when the system is available or inhibited (ie, deadtime, busy, etc.). Fourth, the prior-art systems have no way to alternate a state condition on the circuit under test, which is an extremely useful technique for diagnosing operational problems.
Given the advantages of voice-activation of instruments, why is it not widely available? The answer is that all voice-activated measurement systems employ full word recognition algorithms, resulting in extremely high cost and complexity, complex software, often a cumbersome “training” period, and lack of speaker universality. And still they have an annoying delay between the command and the pulse. To take one example: a commercial dictation routine, although costly, works pretty well—on a $2500 machine with a fast multi-core processor and gobs of cache, and after 60 minutes of tedious training. Seriously, if you only want to trigger a scope, word-recognition is overkill.
What is needed is a low-cost, easy to use, extremely versatile device to generate an output signal, capable of triggering an oscilloscope as well as a circuit under test, all upon one or two simple voice commands. Preferably the device includes multiple operational modes and multiple outputs so that the user can select the mode and output for each type of measurement. Even more preferably, the device would involve no training, no software installation, no special adaptors, no anything else; just connect the device to the scope and trigger it. Such a device will simplify innumerable measurement tasks, thereby earning the heartfelt appreciation of electronic test engineers everywhere.